Insurance Claim

[Recycler]

Doubt they'll take your wishes to repair into consideration.
I've had a VFR written off and had to provide MCN ads to show what they go for to increase the offer.

I was lucky as they paid the value LESS the salvage value and told me to sell the wreck to make up the difference.

So I kept the bike and rebuilt it with forks & wheel from a breakers, got it inspected by the DOT and put it back on the road. I think it worked out that the £4k bike was back on the road for about £1250 in total, plus I had about £3,500 from the claim. To keep the original plate you had to have enough points scored from a list: in my case original motor, frame and one wheel was enough, otherwise it's a Q plate.

If you can steer things in this direction you might have your cake and eat it. Start collecting evidence of it's value: other ads, proof of it's condition etc.

[BobA]

Shak'

Best of luck. It may actually be in your favour that your insurer is Dutch, because they may have to factor in the cost of collecting the bike from the UK etc. Dunno what Dutch law dictates should happen to a accident damaged bike?

Also, can they be arsed to send an assesor, to check the damage/costs, I wonder, or will they try and assess the damage with emailed pics etc?

Finally, is the bike on foreign plates still, or did you get it transferred over to UK plates?

All this could make a difference to the outcome of your claim, but I honestly don't envy your battle with possible red tape here!

Best of Luck


Bob

[shakawe]

Bob- bike is on special German export plates and has not been registered in UK yet.

[shakawe]

Update. Insurance have agreed to pay for all repairs. About £1000.00 more than Glass valuation. Probably helped that it was a third party claim. Should be on the road in about a week.

[lootch67]

Brilliant news!

[Dilbert]

Excellent result, but hugely unlikley for a british insurance company to do this.

My daughter got hit from behind in her delapidated Citroen AX, the insurance wrote it off as an "uneconomic repair" because the body shop quoted about £1300 including about £200 for an exhaust, I got £700 from them reduced by £75 because I "bought it back" the exhaust cost £16 from Kwik-Fit for a piece of pipe and a rubber hanger, I got a rear light unit off eBay for £14 and I filled the dented panel, she kept it another 5-6 months until the brakes started getting dodgy and we traded it in for £400 against a new(er) Clio.

You've just got to play the game and hope for the best, in English Law (correct me if I'm wrong Whealie) it seems you only have to be compensated to an "adequate" level for your loss, they do not have to pay you what it would cost to replace.

[shakawe]

I think that "dilapidated" might have been the problem. Posssibly all depends on the engineers report. Mine said that Bike was in excellent condition and then went on to say that the amount quoted for repairs was a reasonable cost and that it would be an equitable settlement. This was a UK engineer. Incidentally I ended up dealing with the UK branch of the company. However repairs were authorised by the Belgian company. Will have quite a number of slightly damaged parts ( cosmetic) for sale shortly. I was hoping that I could pick and choose with which repairs I would have done and then collect the balance from the repair company but they are not prepared to do this. Oh well!!!!!!

[BlindPugh]

I have salvaged lots of panels in the past and would say that once the stickers are off the damage never looks quite so bad ! So get a three-bond repair kit, fibreglass kit and stink the garage out.